1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a new type of functionalized nanoparticles for drug delivery, the method for preparing the nanoparticles, and applications thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Although new approaches for treating cardiac diseases including controlled drug delivery (Engel et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103, 15546-15551 (2006)) and stem cell therapy (Orlic et al. Nature 410, 701-705 (2001) and Quevedo et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106, 14022-14027 (2009)) have been suggested, it remains challenged to obtain therapeutic but not side effects. Microsphere (Sy et al. Nat Mater 7, 863-868 (2008)) and gel-like materials (Hsieh et al. J Clin Invest 116, 237-248 (2006) and Davis et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103, 8155-8160 (2006)) have been reported to be used for delivering drugs, prolonging the drug retention in the infracted area and improving cardiac functions. Although these materials can be used to deliver drugs into the heart, they may not be suitable for controlled drug release as their sustention in the infarcted area is typically too long, leading to poorly characterized release kinetics of drugs. Moreover, it is unclear how these implanted materials can be retained in the infarct area for a long time (typically for weeks or months) without degradation at an appropriate rate (Anderl et al. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A 88A, 704-710 (2009)) which ultimately results in an inflammatory response and/or a foreign body reaction.